Sunday, July 12, 2015

Painting WITH kids!

It all started with this room. It really all started with the quilt I started last week. The quilt needed a new updated color in this room. Seriously, this IS how my brain works...

I had been putting off this room since it had gotten to the point of not being able to walk in without injury. I had been asking Adam to clean his room for the past week. This is how Adam cleans his room. ( read, I am the one doing ALL the cleaning and he is coming in to visit)

So, I started Saturday morning at 7am taking all the STUFF out to paint the room. It has been six years since we moved into this house and he was only two when we moved in. I decided it was time for a bigger boy color in his room and a SERIOUS declutter to help him keep up with what he has. Third grade is more homework and more activities. I want a better handle on this situation!

The color we chose was Valspar Gravity from Lowe's . It is a gorgeous gray with complete depth( it is stunning). It was the PERFECT color...until it was not! In the can it was perfect, on one wall it was perfect but when the whole room was painted, it had a purple hue. I will not say who cried but I will say I had painted the whole room. I took some deep breaths and asked Adam if he wanted to go pick out another color. He was very sweet and said no since he knew I had done so much work. After some reassuring that it was okay, he said he would just go to look.

It can be very overwhelming to an adult to look at colors. To a child, I cannot imagine how hard it would be! We grabbed some blues and then took a break in the garden center to look at what was chosen. Oatlands Dainty Blue was the winner! Here are the two dried in paint sticks. They look so much lighter than on the walls.

The next coat I enlisted the help from the kids!

Here is the room this morning after one coat of Valspar Reserve ( I love this paint). I will be doing a second coat today and then I have to paint the trim Ultra White :o)

The color is FANTASTIC! Adam is happy without reservation! I will post more updates as we progress.

8 comments

I had three boys. The cleaning the rooms looks familiar! Suddenly no energy/no ability to make a decision/and mom doing the most (all) the work. The best thing we ever did was buy a house with their rooms and bathroom upstairs. Our bedroom and all public rooms were downstairs. That way I could mentally prepare myself to brave the mess. We redid each boy's room when they hit middle school. After cleaning/sorting/organizing, each boy was on his own. Let's just say the floor was rarely if ever seen. Love the blue color and we too had a blue/gray color turn purple in certain light.

yes I can remember trying to sort the girls bedrooms out when they were young, still seem to go and help Helen in her house and she is now 39|! and still untidy! The blue looks very nice and hopefully when complete he will try and keep a bit or order to the room or maybe that is wishful thinking

I love this paint too. I had to match a ceiling white after fixing a roof leak, and it matched exactly and goes on great. Don't feel so bad about getting the color wrong, I had rag rolled my daughter's room and then put a glaze on it when 3 years later the pink was too "young" for her. Had to repaint it a very pretty pastel green but first had to sand down on the walls to roughen up the prior glazing!

Grey is the toughest color to find for walls. When I did my bathroom grey, I got samples of 4 different colors and painted test splotches on the walls. Even with that, the grey I got has a blueish hue! I have embraced it though and just put blue accents in there and act like it was on purpose. Poor kid getting a purple room!! The blue looks fantastic.